Surprisingly, the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign will take place next week. Not surprisingly, the most likely Republican nominee is skipping the event.
NYT (“Trump Plans to Skip G.O.P. Debate for Interview With Tucker Carlson“):
Former President Donald J. Trump plans to upstage the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday by sitting for an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, according to multiple people briefed on the matter.
In the past 24 hours, Mr. Trump has told people close to him that he has made up his mind and will skip the debate in Milwaukee, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Trump is notoriously mercurial, and left himself something of an out to change his mind with an ambiguous post on his website, Truth Social, on Thursday. He wrote that he’s polling well ahead of his rivals and added, “Reagan didn’t do it, and neither did others. People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?”
For weeks, the former president has been quizzing aides, associates and rally crowds about what he should do. Until earlier this week, Mr. Trump had been giving people the impression he was considering a last-minute surprise appearance on Wednesday.
Still, people close to him had said for months that he was unlikely to take part in the first two Republican debates, both of which are sponsored by the Republican National Committee. And Mr. Trump’s apparent decision to skip the first debate of the presidential nominating contest is a major affront to both the R.N.C. and Fox News, which is hosting the event.
The WSJ Editorial Board (“Culling the Republican Presidential Herd“) is hoping this helps the party find an alternative:
The first Republican presidential debate hits the stage in Milwaukee next week, and perhaps the moment will help one or more of the candidates break from the pack. It often does. But before the brawling begins, it’s not too soon to think about how to narrow the GOP field to give former President Trump a challenge that the party and the country deserve.
[…]
The man from Mar-a-Lago wants a divided field with a half dozen candidates splitting single- or low double-digit support.
That’s what happened in 2016 when Mr. Trump rode pluralities to the GOP nomination. In Iowa he came in second, with 24% of the vote. Then he won New Hampshire with 35% and South Carolina with 33%. Too many nonviable candidates stayed in too long, many believing Mr. Trump would eventually blow up and hoping to be the lone contender against him.
[…]
The Milwaukee debate should be the first culling line. The candidates who say they’ve qualified so far are Messrs. Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Scott and Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, Ms. Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Any announced candidate who hasn’t qualified for the debate based on the Republican National Committee’s criteria isn’t likely to strike political lightning from the sidelines. Staying in longer is essentially a vanity project, or an audition to be a talk-show host.
The debate and its aftermath will also be a sorting opportunity. A bad performance could mean that support flat-lines and fund raising evaporates. No candidate who has been sleeping in Holiday Inns for months will want to drop out, but a failure to break out by the second debate on Sept. 27 means there’s little chance of doing so. By the start of autumn, anyone who’s polling in the single digits should be asking what it would accomplish to come in fourth in Iowa or New Hampshire.
[…]
The Milwaukee debate should be the first culling line. The candidates who say they’ve qualified so far are Messrs. Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Scott and Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, Ms. Haley and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Any announced candidate who hasn’t qualified for the debate based on the Republican National Committee’s criteria isn’t likely to strike political lightning from the sidelines. Staying in longer is essentially a vanity project, or an audition to be a talk-show host.
The debate and its aftermath will also be a sorting opportunity. A bad performance could mean that support flat-lines and fund raising evaporates. No candidate who has been sleeping in Holiday Inns for months will want to drop out, but a failure to break out by the second debate on Sept. 27 means there’s little chance of doing so. By the start of autumn, anyone who’s polling in the single digits should be asking what it would accomplish to come in fourth in Iowa or New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, as always, there’s pining for a candidate not yet in the race to come in and save us.
WaPo (“Rupert Murdoch encouraged Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin to seek presidency“):
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly encouraged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to run for president in 2024, according to two people familiar with entreaties made in at least two face-to-face meetings.
The previously unreported meetings took place months ago, but Murdoch’s ask has taken on fresh relevance as Youngkin continues to lay the groundwork for a potential last-minute White House bid and as Murdoch outlets hyped his presidential prospects this month with a mix of sober Wall Street Journal analysis and buzzy Page Six blurbs.
[…]
A political newcomer and former Carlyle Group executive who plowed $20 million of his own money to fund his 2021 gubernatorial campaign, Youngkin swiftly vaulted from national obscurity to lists of potential Republican presidential contenders the moment he flipped seemingly blue Virginia red.
A recent Virginia Commonwealth University survey found Virginians favor Youngkin over President Biden for president 44 percent to 37 percent in a hypothetical head-to-head contest, but Youngkin barely registers in national Republican primary polls. Nevertheless, White House buzz around him has persisted.
Some political insiders see a path for Youngkin based on his ties to the donor class and a personal fortune that Forbes estimated at $470 million at the time of his election; appeal to evangelicals as someone who started a church in his basement; and ability to wage MAGA culture wars in the style of the friendly dad next door.
Yet Youngkin would face tremendous logistical hurdles if he sticks with his plan to stay out of the race until after the Virginia General Assembly races on Nov. 7 that have the potential to boost or dim his national prospects. The candidate filing deadlines for presidential primaries or caucuses will have passed by that date in some key states, including Nevada (Oct. 15) and South Carolina (Oct. 31). Deadlines in a host of other states fall soon after that.
Youngkin has two missions, winning the statehouse and the White House, which are intertwined. Virginia Republicans must hold the House and flip the Senate to preserve the very thing that launched Youngkin to national prominence: his reputation for energizing MAGA voters without alienating suburban moderates.
Given that there’s a very high chance (at least 30%, if not 40%) that the Republican nominee wins the presidency in 2024, I join Murdoch and the WSJ Editorial Board in pining for that person not to be Donald J. Trump. Alas, this is almost certainly a pipe dream. Trump continues to have very strong appeal with the folks likely to show up to vote in Republican primaries.
The myth that Trump only won the 2016 nomination because the moderates split that vote among themselves persists despite having no real basis. As I detailed in my March 2020 post “Why 2020 Democrats Were Able to Consolidate the Moderates and 2016 Republicans Weren’t,” Trump took the lead almost immediately after entering the race and never relinquished it. Further, a whopping 13 candidates, including early frontrunner Jeb Bush, dropped out before Super Tuesday on March 1. It just didn’t matter.
There’s just nobody in the field or sitting on the sidelines that has the appeal to Republican voters than Trump has. If he’s not sitting in jail when the primaries kick off with the Iowa caucus on January 15, Trump is likely to come pretty close to running the table. He’ll likely have the nomination wrapped up by the end of Super Tuesday on March 5.
I just don’t see any other possible outcome if Trump remains in the race as a candidate. And, honestly, I have no idea at this point how the race would shake out if Trump is sidelined.
